Statistics has shown that the morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in China have been increasing for the last five decades. During the 1950's to 1960's, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases ranked fifth and sixth of all the diseases causing deaths. Since 1975, however, they have ascended to the second and third places respectively, and the death caused by cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases has been taking the first place in all deaths caused by diseases. As a matter of fact, the mortality of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in Chinese accounted for 42.6% of all the deaths in 2001 from 12.07% in 1975. Nowadays, they cause about 2 millions deaths every year. Some patients survive, but most of the survivors are disabled and unable to take care of themselves in their daily life, which causes heavy burdens for their families and the society.
Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases are also the leading causes of deaths in western countries. Based on the current epidemiological data, it is estimated that till 2020, coronary artery disease and cerebral hemorrhage are still the first and second causes of death of human being, even though the order of the death causes due to human diseases will be changed significantly. It is estimated that up till then, the global deaths of coronary artery disease will increase from 6.3 millions in 1990 to 11 millions; and the deaths of cerebral hemorrhage will be up from 4.4 millions to 7.7 millions. During these 30 years, the death caused by circular system diseases will increase to 59.6%. The deaths of coronary artery disease and stroke will increase 74.6% and 75%, respectively. All these data show that cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases are not only the main diseases affecting harm human health; they are also the current and will remain the ‘No. 1 killer’ leading to death or disability.
Among the therapeutic drugs for treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, traditional Chinese patent medicines and Western medicines are administered with effects focusing on different aspects; traditional Chinese patent medicines have less side effects, and therefore have taken a good share of the market. Among the available traditional Chinese patent medicines for the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, those comprising, as active components, active ingredients of biological effective parts of herbs, such as notoginsenoside, salvianolic acid, radix puerarine isoflavones, and gypenosides, are attracting more and more attentions. Since the biological effective parts in the traditional Chinese patent medicine herbs for treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases have achieved respective functions and effects focusing on different aspects, they are expected to find potential wide use in combined administration. On the other hand, currently, the traditional Chinese patent medicines based on single biological effective part of herbs, especially in the form of injection solutions, such as XUESAITONG, XUESHUANTONG (trade names), fall short of the demand for combined administration. Furthermore, simply mixing some traditional Chinese patent medicines injection solutions without the previous approval of State Food and Drug Administration represents a great risk of unexpected adverse reactions, such as rapid blood pressure increase, fever, and allergy. Therefore, it will be very important to provide more effective and convenient compositions of biologically active parts of herbs for clinical applications.